


The Lesser Details

by ilgaksu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Coran Zine, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 03:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14741174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: When Coran is sixteen, he punches the heir to the Altean throne in the face three times.





	The Lesser Details

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as part of _This Gorgeous Man_ , a charity Coran-centric zine.

When Coran is sixteen, he punches the heir to the Altean throne in the face three times. The teeth Alfor loses grow back, naturally, but it’s the symbolism that counts: the crown prince, coming of age, spitting up his own bone for his country. 

After the fight ends, Coran lies on his back, listens to the crowds, turns his head to look at where Alfor lies beside him, winded. His smile is all blood. They help each other to stand, bearing each other’s weight, a kind of twinned Atlas. Their silhouettes merge and then separate again on the ground.  

 

*

 

Coran is raised by his grandfather, and his grandfather is an engineer - so gifted at fixing empty spaces that Coran doesn’t realise the word  _ orphan _ is a word for him, that’s it’s a word meant to hurt,  until he is halfway to being of age. Of course, he misses his parents sometimes, as you’re supposed to, but he had been very young, barely enough breaths let out for the world to call him anything else but new. He has seen paintings, but when he imagines them, tries to hold them in his mind, their form is slippery. Their backs are turned to him, their faces indistinct, already having breached a horizon Coran is nowhere close to crossing yet. And Coran has his grandfather. 

Alteans can only carry one child in a decafeeb. It makes their blood-relatives less than a handful.  Coran never sees his grandfather cry for the only son he ever had, for the spouse that returned to stardust. It doesn’t mean, naturally, that he didn’t: only that he learnt to turn his face when he did. Hieronymus had been a quiet man, intense in stare and laugh - the noise of it bursting out of his chest like a surprise even to himself. So Coran has his grandfather, and his grandfather has the Castle of Lions, and Coran is raised, in some ways, by both: the soothing hum of the Castle systems the best of a mother’s lullaby. 

 

*

 

Alfor catches him letting himself out of Cyprian’s chamber whilst the party for Alfor’s name-day is still yawning itself over and done with. 

“Ah,” Coran says, “This is nothing untoward, or at least, untoward in the unwanted sense, and I - I am going to stop talking now. I think. Yes. Good morning. Is it morning?” 

There’s a silence. Alfor adjusts the silver chains of his robes, raises his eyebrows and goes, “This....makes more sense than I would have anticipated. In retrospect.” 

Cyprian is the newest recruit into the royal diplomatic corps. Coran knows how the universe works: the rules of it, the order of the elements, the subtle patterning of how planets arrange themselves in orbit. After all, he’s an engineer in his own right, now of age, heir to the keys of the Castle’s engines: more than a remnant of his grandfather’s era. But Cyprian knows how each place’s inhabitants work: their tongues right out of heads, their customs right out of their hearts - how to fix them into alignment, break them down into a solvable component. He’s almost made an algorithm out of it, and Coran - 

Call him interested in broadening his own education. 

“Get him to teach you Galran,” Alfor says now. He’s barely got a few quintants on Coran in terms of age, but somehow gained a great deal of extra height into the bargain. Coran reminds himself to insist on extra nutrients with meal so he can catch up. 

“Galran?” 

“It looks like it’s going to be useful. They’ve asked to come and discuss something. Some technology. Mutual exchange. Trade. Something, I don’t know,” Alfor yawns. “They’re sending the heir. So, Galran. That is,” and here Alfor’s smile turns sideways, sly and familiar, making him less a royal and more a boy dressed up in his father’s clothes, “If you and  _ Cyprian  _ can find the time, in between all that -” 

Coran, midway through replacing his vest, pauses, and applies himself to the task of chasing Alfor down the hallway. Alfor runs himself into a blur, and Coran is there, following him around corners, the flash of silver chains in the corner of his eye, Alfor’s laughter ringing off the Castle walls. 

 

*

 

Coran meets Abraxas on one of Emperor Zarkon’s state visits. By this point, he can speak Galran fluently. Cyprian is long gone out of Coran’s orbit. Abraxas is older, one of the Emperor’s guards, reserved in the way a lot of his kind are, all gleaming dark eyes and teeth afraid to bite. When he laughs, it’s hard-won. One day Coran catches himself smiling absently, the way Alfor had in the early days of his courtship with the queen, and pronounces himself down with a chronic case of happiness. 

Of course, nothing of this kind is permanent. 

 

*

 

“When something happens to me,” Alfor says. He’s turned away, his back a closed door, but his eyes meet Coran’s in the reflection of the Castle’s windows. It has been years since Alfor smiled at Coran, laughing through the bubble of blood in his throat, loose-toothed and easy. 

Coran notices, has been noticing, the way fear is crystallising Alfor; the bow of his shoulders, the turn of his mouth, and his eyes. All of them saturated, all of them brittle, all of them both at once. Coran tries not to notice how Alfor says  _ when  _ not  _ if,  _ but Coran was trained and raised by the best of the best. Coran cannot unsee the lesser details. 

“Nothing can happen to you,” Coran tells Alfor, but he doesn’t say nothing will. 

“You will make Allura your priority,” Alfor tells him. 

“You don’t usually give me orders,” Coran observes mildly. 

“I’m usually able to live the outcome if you refuse,” Alfor replies. 

 

*

 

Coran has never been one for children: when he thinks of raising a legacy, he thinks only of the lights of the Castle, rising like sunrise, welcoming him home.

“I’m sorry,” Abraxas says, before turning and walking back out into the war. “But I chose a loyalty long before I knew you. I cannot help where I came from.”

Coran sits for a long time after he goes. He curses the war, and he curses Zarkon, and he curses how power can turn carnivorous, how it can turn cannibalistic, turn into something that devours the whole known universe. And finally he curses this: how easily love can turn unreliable, can turn faulty, can turn into greed. 

Then he goes back to reinforcing the Castle’s protective systems. After all, the Castle needs him. In this way, like his grandfather, dead some decafeebs and more, he learns to turn his face. 

 

*

 

The sky is falling. Coran argues with Alfor, but they both know time is something Coran has never tried to waste. He gets into the sleeping pod. It’s not his size, but then Alfor always remained taller: in the end, Coran had never quite caught up. 

_ Either I will wake up,  _ he thinks to himself,  _ or not at all.  _ It’s as easy as closing your eyes. It’s as easy as hearing a lullaby. It’s as easy as - 

 

*

 

Coran is sixteen, watching the heir to the throne of Altea: how he swallows his own blood, how he takes Coran’s weight and lets Coran take his. 

“Don’t fall back down,” Alfor warns him, his voice thick and numbed.  

“Don’t you either,” Coran retorts, and waits, ready and baited, for the sound of Alfor’s laugh. 

 


End file.
